Whistle-blower: AT&T Colluded With NSA on Wiretaps

AT&T gave the National Security Agency open access to its customers’ phone calls and Web-surfing activities, according to a former AT&T employee cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s lawsuit against the company.

The full story and affidavit filed by the former AT&T employee are available at Wired.com.

Wired: AT&T provided National Security Agency eavesdroppers with full access to its customers’ phone calls, and shunted its customers’ internet traffic to data-mining equipment installed in a secret room in its San Francisco switching center, according to a former AT&T worker cooperating in the Electronic Frontier Foundation’s lawsuit against the company.

Mark Klein, a retired AT&T communications technician, submitted an affidavit in support of the EFF’s lawsuit this week. That class action lawsuit, filed in federal court in San Francisco last January, alleges that AT&T violated federal and state laws by surreptitiously allowing the government to monitor phone and internet communications of AT&T customers without warrants.

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Wired:

Statement: Mark Klein, April 6, 2006 My background: For 22 and 1/2 years I worked as an AT&T technician, first in New York and then in California.

What I observed first-hand: In 2002, when I was working in an AT&T office in San Francisco, the site manager told me to expect a visit from a National Security Agency agent, who was to interview a management-level technician for a special job. The agent came, and by chance I met him and directed him to the appropriate people.

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